Not Too Late To Live
by Card Carrying Villains
Summary: Sollux is half-dead and on his way to full-dead. Aradia can't bring herself to tell him. But maybe things will work out anyway. Sollux/Aradia By Spades


Hi guys, it's Spades again. I need to get a life. I've been told they sell them in the cereal aisle, right next to the Cheerios.

So I had a request from taliandtutu to do something Sollux/Aradia... and I think I did an okay job (this was written in history class, so it's not perfect)... it's not as shippy as I'd have liked it to be because I have some trouble writing Aradia. And it's definitely not as funny as I'd have liked, because it's hard for me to write Sollux and comedy after EOA5 and that's when this ended up being set because that's what I had an idea for.

IN ANY CASE. Have fun, hope this delivers :)

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><p>Sollux: Ask awkward question.<p>

"So, AA… what did you mean when you said the others would be arriving with my body?"

Aradia: Avoid answering for as long as possible.

You are Aradia Megido, and you saw this coming. You know how smart Sollux is; it's actually a wonder he didn't ask faster. Maybe in the brief time he'd been floating out here at the Green Sun with you, he'd been contemplating the answer to this on his own. You'd hoped he would've shot off to the obvious conclusion immediately and not felt the need for clarification, but apparently that wasn't the case.

Or maybe he just wanted to break the awkward silence.

"I don't know what you're talking about," you dodge, continuing to face the Green Sun (you've closed your eyes so as not to burn them out. As much fun as Terezi claims she has tasting the rainbow, you'd like green to stay a color and not a flavor).

"You do two know what I'm talking about," he contradicts. "You said we'd be meeting friends here, some of the humans and then the survivors from the meteor." Sollux floats over in space to hover next to you, giving you a Look. "Putting aside the fact that I'm ripping myself apart wondering who else dies, you said they'd be bringing my body with them. What did you mean?"

"I seriously don't know what you're talking about, Sollux," you repeat, a little more vehemently, more emphatically.

It's awkward enough floating out in the darker end of paradox space, in the furthest reaches of the furthest ring, staring at the Green freaking Sun with your ex. Why oh why do you have to be put in the position of having to explain to him that technically speaking, he is a half-ghost. He is half dead. He is also half-alive, and his half-living body is going to commit suicide to save the survivors on the meteor and get them out to where you are now. This is hard to explain. Very hard. And not just because the concept is bizarre. You're not sure you'll be able to spit it out, if it comes to that. It hurts enough knowing that by the time Sollux's body gets here, he won't be a half-ghost; he'll be a full one. Having to say it out loud might kill you.

If you weren't god tier, that is. You appreciate being god tier quite a lot. You are very okay with it.

Sollux: Stress out.

You are Sollux Captor, and you have a sinking suspicion that you are dead. Somehow or another, you are dead back on the meteor. You may have walked out of a dreambubble to get to wherever the hell you are now, out in the furthest ring, but you are beginning to doubt you were sleeping. You are almost positive, in fact… well, thinking about it, you assume Eridan must've actually managed to kill you. Gosh, that's embarrassing. Depressing, even. You really underestimated him.

But you don't feel… dead. You don't think you're dead. You met up with Tavros in the dreambubble, and his eyes were completely white. Aradia said her eyes went like that too, when she was a ghost. Only one of your eyes is white. Maybe you're only halfway dead. But does that mean you're unconscious back on the meteor, waiting for Eridan to finish you off? Or maybe bleeding slowly to death? No, Karkat wouldn't have left you behind like that. Maybe you're in the process of dying.

A hideous thought floats through your mind, an image of yourself bleeding slowly to death in Karkat's arms while Eridan laughs horribly in the background. You shiver and stop thinking about that.

"AA, I'm gonna ask again, okay. I want two know the truth: Am I dead right now?"

Aradia: Watch the stars.

Sollux's question echoes in your thoughts. There's no easy way to answer this-

There is a vague yellow flash somewhere behind you, and it must be exceedingly bright if you can see it over the brilliantly radioactive glow of the green sun. You turn to look over your shoulder. There is a shockingly bright yellow pinpoint in space, far off but getting rapidly closer.

You know what's happening. You know who's powering the meteor with what's left of their psionic powers. You know who's killing himself with the exertion needed to get his friends out to the Green Sun.

Before you can stop yourself from actually answering Sollux's question, you say, "Almost."

Luckily, Sollux doesn't seem to hear you. He's too busy staring, mesmerized, into the Green Sun. Wondering what he's looking at, you turn back around just in time to see the two humans you'd been expecting to arrive here. They stare at you. You stare at them.

"Sollux, go talk to them," you suggest, and before he can reject this suggestion you shove him forward toward them with an apology to the boy in the same color god tier outfit as you (sans the wings). Sollux splutters awkwardly for a few moments -he's never talked to the humans before, not once- and you turn back to the asteroid-turned-impromptu rocket that's nearly upon you at this point.

"Holy shit," says a voice you don't recognize (must be one of the humans; their voices are much lighter than yours). "What the hell's that?"

"Forget that," says the other human (an even _lighter_ voice), "What's _that_?"

Aside from the meteor, something's just crashed through paradox space and shot out of the Green Sun. It looks like a Prospitian battleship, and there are more humans on it. You were not expecting this until later.

The humans engage in what you can only call a "moment". It involves much hugging and lots of loud, light voices. Sollux pays no attention to it and finally seems to notice the asteroid, which is slowing to a halt nearby.

"AA," he says thickly, quietly, and you're sure he's figured it out for himself, "Forget I asked, okay?"

Oh, he's figured it out. He must've recognized the electric yellow power rocketing the asteroid through space, must've maybe felt something, you don't know… You look over to try to gauge the expression on his face, maybe reassure him-

And you suddenly feel a rush of dead horror and guilt and a memory of Nepeta at the beginning of this shitshow of a game, asking where her client player is, a vivid memory of Sollux himself looking out the window at you and wondering where you were, and you seriously want to cry because you can't see him anymore.

Sollux: Flip the fuck out.

Aradia is staring right through you with the most disturbingly sad look on her face, and it sort of bothers you, so you force yourself to look away. At the asteroid. That you've psionically dragged out to the furthest reaches of the furthest ring. Your eyes drift blankly to the lab (it dawns on you uncomfortably that everything is in 3D again), to the roof, because there's people on the roof. There are two on the ground in pools of their own blood (you can tell from here that one of them's Vriska; that garish orange fairy suit could probably be seen across the galaxy), and four left standing.

Only four survivors. You're not sure which of your allies you're hoping to see among them. Suddenly, lots of emotions are rushing back into your mind in a furious flurry, and it hits you what's happened. You're dead. Oh god, the other body on the roof is covered in mustard-yellow, oh god oh god oh god oh god you killed yourself to save them, didn't you? Oh god, that must be Karkat over there, yanking you up by the front of your shirt and shaking you, trying to wake you up, yelling and yelling and oh god you can't keep looking at this, you're going to cry.

You pick out Terezi's FLARP outfit easily, because the brilliant colors stand out harshly against the gray rooftop. You float closer to the roof, close enough to see that she's covering her face, trying not to cry. The person in brilliant vermillion, you realize, is Kanaya (you're surprised you couldn't guess that sooner), and she's biting her lip and staring up at the humans. The fourth person alive on the roof is Gamzee, covered in blood and more lucid than you've ever seen him, and he's trying to calm Karkat down, pulling him away from your body (you shiver as you think that), whispering in Karkat's ear, telling him there's nothing he can do about it-

Aradia enters your line of vision and scares the living fuck out of your four living friends. There's a lot of shouting (most of it is Karkat, of course) and surprise over the fact that she's not only alive, but god tier. You were pretty surprised yourself, honestly. As Karkat flips his shit and Terezi tacklehugs Aradia, the four god tier humans float over and introduce themselves in person. Kanaya and the human girl in orange are magnetic, the blue-dressed boy and the black-dressed girl pull Karkat's and Gamzee's attention, and the boy in red distracts Terezi from Aradia.

Aradia smiles, and when nobody is looking, she lands, walks over to your body, lifts you up and decides that now would be a wonderful time to smooch your blood-covered corpse right on the lips.

You have about half a second to be shocked and to watch everyone else's shock before your point of view changes and you're suddenly out in the middle of space, floating around with a bunch of Prospit-yellow debris.

You were right, weren't you? You were only ever going to die twice. Your Prospit dreamself somehow managed to survive Jack blowing up the moon (you mentally give yourself a pat on the back for that).

You change out of the obnoxious yellow pajamas and find yourself a mirror among the space debris. You grin at the realization that in the acquisition of a new body, you've got your vision twofold back.

You shoot off through the stars with a psionic jet-trail behind you, aiming for the still-glowing green sun. You don't stop rocketing forward, ignoring your headache, until you can hear Karkat shouting at the humans and raging at Aradia because it's not her job to hope, that was Eridan's and now he's dead (good riddance, you think), and you skid to a stop six inches behind him on the rooftop, leaving vaguely red and blue-tinted skid marks behind you. You frizz Karkat's hair as you pass him (he's stupefied) and pull Aradia into an electric kiss.

"Thankth," you say, sorry to see your lisp brought back to life with you, "for remembering. And I'm thorry that nobody ever tried to corpthethmooch you back to life. Tho that jutht now…" you mumble, suddenly becoming very self-conscious of the fact that you just smooched Aradia in front of all your living friends and a whole bunch of aliens. "That wath becauthe nobody ever thought to corpthethmooch you back to life tho long ago. Ith a little late, but…"

Aradia just smiles. "I know," she says. "Stop talking. We're alive; that's what matters."

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><p>Still taking requests. Especially if they're crack pairings, because those tend to lend themselves better to comedy and also I feel like most Homestuck crack pairings have a vague level of plausibility to them.<p>

Reviews will be fed into the quantum transducer and used to generate plot.


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